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Cleantech matters: Seizing transformational opportunities

Corporations embrace cleantech for revenue growth

To what extent is your company exploring, researching or utilizing cleantech?

Cleantech spending in 2011 (US$ millions)

Anticipated change in spending 2012–2014

Top three factors influencing cleantech technology

How will the cleantech focus of corporate developmentexecutives change over the next three years?

What is the focus of your cleantech acquisition strategy?

What are your primary drivers in partnering withemerging cleantech companies?

Corporations are leveraging their brand power to move into new cleantech markets.

Global corporations across numerous industries are moving quickly to pursue cleantech revenue opportunities. The revenue opportunities are transformational because 1) they arise from a shift to a resource-efficient and low-carbon economy, and 2) they are changing corporate business strategies.

The path of transformation

Corporations are pursuing transformative opportunities in several important ways.

The innovations and emerging business models related to the new ecosystem generate fundamental corporate transformations. For example, the electric vehicles market involves carmakers, utilities, battery manufacturers and smart-grid companies, and a broader constituency of consumer products, retailers and communication corporations.

Widespread corporate cleantech adoption

Our survey results show that cleantech adoption is widespread among the world's largest enterprises. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said that cleantech was widely adopted throughout their organizations and championed by their senior management.

A shift to leading-edge technology acquisitions

To date, respondents have favored "value" cleantech acquisitions — i.e., ones that provide incremental improvements to existing technologies with immediate returns.However, over the next five years, executives indicated that they will increasingly acquire "leading-edge" technologies.

Partnerships and the transformation agenda

The transformation agenda can also be seen clearly in corporate partnering strategies related to emerging cleantech companies, vital to boosting in-house innovation and seizing market opportunities as the world moves toward a resource-efficient and low-carbon economy.

Seizing transformational opportunities

The first stage of the corporate response to the transformation to a more resource-efficient and low-carbon global economy is underway and executives of market-leading companies are moving to the second stage.

First stage: improvements in resource efficiency

Second stage: seizing transformational opportunities to create new cleantech-enabled products and leverage core competencies to enter the cleantech market or enter entirely new markets, all with the objective of new revenue generationThis is leading us to an era of profound transformation — in products, companies and industries — as the balance sheets of global corporations are brought to bear on cleantech-enabled revenue opportunities.

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